TRENTON — Being selected as a juror, that most basic of civic duties, is more often greeted with dread than enthusiasm.

But there are New Jersey residents who would jump at the chance to serve on a jury, and one state lawmaker wants to let them have their way.

Assemblyman Craig Coughlin (D-Middlesex) recently introduced a bill (A2949) that would create a new pool of potential jurors from volunteers.

“If they are out of work, in college or retired and want to do their civic duty, this would require the county clerk to compile a separate list of people who want to volunteer,” Coughlin said last week.

Such people really do exist — and not just those with free time on their hands.

Chris Yen, a cost engineer from Bridgewater, said he had a good experience sitting on a jury that convicted Amy Locane Bovenizer, an actress who appeared in the television series “Melrose Place,” of assault by auto and vehicular homicide.

“I learned about the law,” Yen said. “I got to interact with other jurors from other parts of the county. And just the whole process I found interesting.”

There were frustrations, he said, like the hours and hours of sitting around. But asked if he would volunteer to do it again, Yen didn’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I was honored to serve.”

But defense attorneys, if you will, object.

They say the idea of allowing people to volunteer for jury duty would probably not pass constitutional muster, and would undermine the idea of a jury of one’s peers by creating a special class of people more likely to be selected.

Currently, jurors — whether on a grand jury or trial jury — are selected from lists that include registered voters, licensed drivers and tax filers. Trial jurors are paid $5 for each of the first three days, and $40 for each subsequent day. Grand jurors, who do not meet on consecutive days, are paid $5 a day.

Coughlin’s bill would throw into the mix a list of volunteers that would be submitted apart from a list of potential jurors the assignment judge already gets.

But even though potential jurors couldn’t volunteer to sit on specific trials, said Alan Zegas, a New Jersey criminal defense attorney, those on the volunteer list would be more likely to be selected since their names would appear on the normal jury duty roles as well.

“Under the constitution, a jury of one’s peers has been interpreted to mean a jury that is randomly selected,” Zegas said. “Once procedures are tampered with that interfere with the element of randomness, there’s huge potential for manipulation of the justice system, as well as the danger of creating a public perception injurious to the administration of justice.”

Joseph Hayden, another prominent defense attorney in the state, was also critical of the idea.

“Such a bill would be clearly unconstitutional, because our constitution contemplates selecting a jury from a cross-section of the community, as opposed to a select few volunteers,” Hayden said. “I wonder what kind of person would volunteer to be on a jury? They might well have an agenda to convict.”

Hayden said the idea was reminiscent of what were known as “blue ribbon juries,” which he said were popular in the 1950s and 1960s.

“They were all male,” he said. “They were hand-picked by the assignment judge of the best and the brightest — someone from Prudential, someone from banks. It was almost an honor to be selected. You look back on it, and it’s a problem. It was kind of an elitist era.”

That system was scrapped at the federal level during the 1960s, and in the 1970s states were barred from using it, according the book “We, the Jury,” by Jeffrey Abramson, a professor at the University of Texas.

Greg Hurley, an analyst at the National Center for State Courts, said he had never heard of volunteer jurors in any other states and agreed that the bill would probably be found unconstitutional.

Hurley, who had practiced law in West Virginia, said residents would occasionally send letters to the court to volunteer for jury duty. But rather than accepting their service, the courts would bar them from service for two years.

During pretrial proceedings, he said, lawyers would often ask potential jurors if they had ever volunteered for jury duty.